Shopping carts having their lading-carrying baskets and supporting frameworks constructed in such a manner that the carts can be telescoped together during storage of the carts have been known for many years.
Typically such a cart includes a tubular elevated support frame carried by a tubular chassis frame that has four wheels pivotally secured to the bottom of the chassis. The elevated support frame ordinarily has a tubular horizontal cross member at its front end. The lading-carrying basket, which is mounted on the elevated support frame, has commonly been made of wire construction in which a multiplicity of generally parallel thin wire elements have been secured to a heavier wire framework.
The chassis frame, the basket and its supporting tubular frame in a telescoping shopping cart of the type described are tapered inwardly from side to side from the back to the front, with the bottom wall of the basket tilted upward from back to front, so that when desired one cart can fit within another similar cart. The side walls and bottom wall of the lading-carrying basket usually terminate at the rear of the basket in a forwardly facing U-shaped heavy wire rim element.
The rear wall of the basket is ordinarily hinged at the top, so that when it is desired to telescope two similarly constructed shopping carts to minimize the space required for storage of the carts, the basket of the rear or second cart can push into the interior of the basket of the first shopping cart and cause the hinged rear wall of the first shopping cart to swing up out of the way. Because of the inward taper from the rear to the front of the lading-carrying basket, the side walls of the basket are of course closer together at the forward end than they are at the rear of the basket. This means that for the hinged rear wall to avoid striking the side walls of the basket when it is displaced upward and forward during telescoping of two carts, the width of the bottom portion of that rear wall must be sufficiently less than the width of the basket at the basket's rear end that the forwardly displaced wall will be somewhat narrower than the basket's narrow forward portion. This produces a horizontal gap of predetermined size, on both sides of the bottom portion of the rear wall, between it and the side walls of the basket when the rear wall is in its closed, generally vertical position.
With the shopping cart construction as just described, because of tolerances in the manufacturing process there is very often a sizable vertical gap between the above mentioned horizontally disposed support element at the front end of the tubular elevated support frame and the horizontally disposed, thin, parallel wire elements that comprise the bottom wall of the lading-carrying basket support on that frame.
Two unrelated problems, each of considerable importance, have presented themselves with telescoping shopping carts of the described construction.
One of these problems is that the distorting forces that are exerted against lading-carrying baskets of wire construction during ordinary usage, as the carts are pushed and bumped around the floor of a typical store, frequently force the rear section of a basket out of shape, thereby causing the bottom portion of the rear wall of the basket to be moved to one side or the other into one of the above described horizontal gaps that are present on both sides of that bottom wall portion. This distortion of the basket and its rear wall can take place while the rear wall is in its closed, generally vertical position. Then, with the basket thus twisted out of shape, when the rear wall of the basket is swung upward during telescoping, it will jam against one side wall or the other of the basket, thus preventing the rear wall from opening up all the way and preventing the two carts from fully nesting.
The second troublesome problem arises from (1) the presence of the above mentioned vertical gap between the horizontally disposed tubular support member at the front end of the elevated support frame and the bottom wall of the lading-carrying basket of one cart, and (2) the fact that when the hinged rear wall of the other cart is swung upward for telescoping, the bight or horizontal portion of the relatively heavy wire U-shaped rear rim element of the basket framework of that cart is quite exposed. The problem presented is that when two shopping carts are fully telescoped, the exposed horizontal portion of the relatively thick rear wire rim element of the front cart is often pushed into the gap between the bottom wires of the wire basket and the horizontally disposed support element at the front of the tubular elevated support frame of the rear cart. This can cause the two carts to be wedged or stuck together so firmly that it is difficult, and sometimes even impossible, to pull the rear cart away from the cart with which it is telescoped.
Applicants have unexpectedly discovered that both these longstanding problems can be overcome by use of a single novel fitting that acts as both a nesting stop and a stabilizer bracket.